“Our society has to do better”: Jaylen Brown on Tyre Nichols

Another disturbing video was released recently of a young black man named Tyre Nichols being beaten literally to death by a group of police officers. Nichols was 29 years old. He was stopped by police in Memphis, Tennessee on January 7 and brutally beaten. He died in the hospital three days later and the body camera footage was released on Friday. It is difficult to actually watch this kind of abuse happen and especially on such a regular basis as it seems to occur in the United States.

NBA players and coaches discuss Tyre Nichols

Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown talked about how difficult it is to play a game after witnessing and hearing about things like what happened to Nichols. Unfortunately, it has become commonplace. After the Celtics’ overtime win over the Lakers on Saturday, around 24 hours after the body camera footage of Nichols’ death was released, Brown talked about how this kind of video creates trauma and that we need to do better as a society to make changes.

“I would be lying if I said something like that hasn’t happened before or potentially can happen again,” Brown said. “I think it’s a systemic issue. I think we can continue to use the words like reform, and until we look at the foundation and how things have been initiated and created and designed, I think we’re going to continue to run into the same issue.”

Brown is an advocate for police reform and social justice and after seeing this footage, which he said he could not watch to the end, he said that he plans to continue to challenge the idea that there’s no need for reform or change.

“I break it down as like, there’s certain people that want the world to change and continue to move forward, and there’s certain people that’s okay with where the world is at,” Brown said. “I’m going to continue to challenge those people, because it doesn’t matter if it benefits your pockets or benefits your financial opportunities.”

“We have to push our society forward and we’ve got to do better in a lot of regards,” said Brown. “As we’ve said many times, and we’re going to continue to say, our society needs to be better.”

The Celtics interim coach Joe Mazzulla also spoke to what happened to Nichols before the game started.

“I do think there is multiple things here. There’s a systemic issue, there’s a cultural issue, there’s a leadership issue,” said Mazzulla. “Bigger than that, there is an issue of — this is a broken world.”

“We live in a broken world where we don’t hold each other accountable enough to the simple things in life of love, respect, of treating your neighbor the right way, and loving your neighbor. And instead, we praise pride, we praise arrogance, we praise entitlement, and we all feel like we can do whatever we want at times, and that’s not how this world works.”

“So, our Celtics organization grieves for that. We pray for that. It’s really important that we’re a representation of love, we’re a representation of hope and taking care of the guy next to us. That’s what it’s all about.”